So what's behind this drop? It's entirely possible viewers are simply tiring of the chalkboard and the high rhetoric, which has been notably higher of late. And needless to say Beck is not the phenom he was a year ago, merely by dint of the country becoming more familiar with him.

But it's probably also worth noting, just in the context of this January, that the month was dominated by hard news, in the form of the Giffords shooting.

Glenn Beck is many things but he is not hard news (nor does he generally attempt to be). And considering the nature of the news, perhaps it's not entirely surprising that viewers were clicking away for a while. Sometimes it's nice to be told the world is not ending.